


Le Temps qui Fuit

by Robin_Fai



Category: Endeavour (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, Magical Realism, Time - Freeform, Where do I start with this?, missed opportunities reclaimed, set just after Coda
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-19
Updated: 2020-04-19
Packaged: 2021-03-01 18:07:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,846
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23741290
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Robin_Fai/pseuds/Robin_Fai
Summary: Time was his everything and nothing. It dragged and dragged through the monotony of the day to day, then slipped away from him when he needed it most.A re-imagining of what might have happened between Morse and Joan post-Coda if time for Morse were not what it was for everyone else.
Relationships: Endeavour Morse/Joan Thursday
Comments: 21
Kudos: 30





	Le Temps qui Fuit

_Buvons, chers amis, le temps qui fuit nous y convie ; profitons de la vie autant que nous pouvons._  
Le bourgeois gentilhomme, Act IV, Scene 1 (Molière, 1670)

***

The liquid in his glass looked like the doorway to another life. He imagined picking it up, pouring it down his throat, and washing away all the disappointments of the world.

Time was his everything and nothing. It dragged and dragged through the monotony of the day to day, then slipped away from him when he needed it most. 

He remembered her face as she’d stood there so early in the morning, listening but not really hearing what he was trying to say. Time had got away from him then, folding at the words he wanted to say, closing up concertina-like until there was only what lead up to it, and what came after.

 _“You mean the world-”_

Time had creased then and swallowed up his confession. Then she was talking again, and he couldn’t explain. He could never explain. The moment was lost. Better to accept it was gone, and that this was the way his life worked, than lamenting over something beyond his control. 

Still the liquid called to him. 

There was a good reason he usually only drank at home. His grip on the natural progression of things was so much more tenuous when drunk. If he couldn’t think in a straight line, how could he live in one?

Tonight, he decided, he didn’t care. He downed the glass and ordered another, and another, and another, until time became as fluid as the whiskey in the bottle.

His head was spinning. Glimpses of a morning intruding on the edges of his vision. He tried to push them away, but it was futile. Standing clumsily, he hurried from the bar, out into the street, and straight into the path of Joan Thursday.

Morse cursed his malediction for what was probably the millionth time. It was a curious little paradox, that if he hadn’t been in that exact bar drinking himself into tomorrow they wouldn’t have crossed paths, and yet because he had been, tomorrow was arriving for him far too soon, so he’d never know why she was there. 

He had only a moment to consider her desperate look before the bright light of morning filled his eyes, erasing all traces of her. He closed his eyes and let the tears fall. There would be no one to see them as he lay on his bed.

He could only hope this was tomorrow. There had been so much alcohol. It would be bad if he’d lost more than a day. Was it now a working day? What if he’d missed work?

Reluctantly he opened his eyes and looked to his bedside clock. It had been worth the investment to get one with a date function. It was Saturday 17th June 1967. It was only the morning after the night before, and he didn’t have to work. He’d been lucky he supposed. One day he would slip up really badly and that would be that for his career. He could give up drinking and reduce the risk, but there was just too much night. He couldn’t bear the thought of lying there in its thick, viscous, depths with nothing but his thoughts for company. 

He imagined for a moment what it would be like if someone knew about his curse. It would be such a comfort to not have to bear it alone. It was a secret he didn’t want to keep, but he had learned the hard way what happened if he told anyone. It was only natural they thought him mad, but it made his life unutterably lonely.

Maybe if someone saw what happened when he lost his grip on time they might believe him, but it never happened when he was with people. That was what made drinking in company all the more dangerous. He could get much more drunk than he could at home, and then as soon as he was alone he was at risk of losing a vast quantity of time. Except last night...

Morse sat up abruptly in his bed. 

Last night he had left the bar and run right into Joan.

Then it had been morning.

_She had been looking at him._

Had she seen? _Could_ she have seen?

Morse hurried to get himself tidied up and out of the door. He needed to find Joan. He had to know.

It wasn’t until he reached the street that he realised he had no idea where he was going. He stood there in the gentle morning sunshine and tried to think where to go. Could Joan have returned home? He couldn’t exactly turn up at the Thursday’s after the last couple of days they’d had on the off chance she had changed her mind. What if she was staying with a friend? He didn’t know most of them, and certainly didn’t know where they lived. Or what if she had completely left Oxford now? For all his skills as a detective he had no idea where to start and a sizeable hangover to work around.

Since he was already out of the flat he decided to go to the corner shop for milk and bread. There was even less to eat than usual in his house currently. He turned to head in the opposite direction, and there she was. 

Joan looked like she hadn’t slept. In fact Morse was almost certain she was in the same clothes as she had been the night before.

“You’re home now then.” 

“You came by before?”

“Several times. You’ve not been home all night. Unless you just weren’t answering the door.”

“I...” Morse was at a loss for what to say next. He didn’t want to make up some lie and he didn’t want Joan to believe he’d not answer the door to her after what he’d said just two days before.

“In fact, I’ve been waiting just across the way all night, and I didn’t see you go in.”

Again Morse found himself locked in silence. Did he really want to tell Joan the truth? Could he live with her thinking him mad.

“Am I going mad, Morse?” Joan interrupted his frantic thoughts. “You were _there_ , at the pub. I was going to Sylvie’s, and then I _saw_ you, and then you were gone. You were right in front of me, and then you were just _gone_. It isn’t possible. We were practically face to face.” Joan’s expression was lined in fear. “Then I come back here and you’re not in, so I wait all night with no sign, but then suddenly you’re coming out of your front door. I must be going mad. After the other day… I must be mad.”

Joan had been waving her hands expressively as she spoke, but now she held them in front of her, clasped together and shaking. 

“You’re not mad.”

“No? So what are you then? Some kind of magician who likes to mess with my mind? Because it _isn’t funny_ Morse.”

“Come inside. We can have tea and… and I can try to explain.” Morse really wanted something stronger to take the edge off his hangover and to make this conversation easier, but the last thing he needed now was to skip out on her.

Joan hesitated then followed him in to his flat. She stopped a few paces in, clearly agitated and over-exhausted. She looked around at the small flat. “It’s not how I imagined.”

Morse set about making the tea. It kept his hands occupied and gave him a chance to try and think how he was going to explain.

“Do you want sugar?”

Joan didn’t answer, instead she stepped forwards and turned her face away slightly, watching him only from the corners of her eyes. “I just… I don’t understand.” 

Morse set the two mugs of tea down. “There’s an explanation. The trouble is it isn’t all that easy to tell.”

Joan shrugged. “I’ve got time.”

The unintended irony of her reply wasn’t lost on Morse. He wondered if he would actually get to say all he wanted this time.

“You see, the thing about me is I’m kind of… lost.” For all that he was a man of literature and opera he found it hard to put into words. “I have a sort of affliction, a curse if you will.”

“A curse?” Joan raised an eyebrow at him. She evidently thought he was being facetious. It was not a good start.

“Time doesn’t stick to me very well. Or more precisely _I_ don’t stick to _it_ ”

“I’m not looking for a crossword clue, Morse, I’m looking for answers.”

“Sometimes I don’t travel through time right. Sometimes it folds and I lose a moment, sometimes it slows so a night can feel like it lasted a week.”

Joan frowned in confusion. Her lips pressed together. Blue eyes, still drowning in regret met his. For a moment Morse reconsidered. Surely the last thing she needed right now was another burden, someone else’s burden, to bear. But then he remembered how she had looked outside, how afraid she was of losing her mind. He knew that feeling far too well to wish it on anyone else. Better she think him mad than herself.

“Everyone has nights that feel long Morse.”

“That’s not what I’m saying. What I’m saying is that time slows around me to the point where a night really can last as long as a week. Then there’s the flip-side to it all. Sometimes I get… dislodged… from time. I lose minutes, hours, days even. Once I lost almost a whole week.”

“Morse-”

He cut her off. He needed to finish before he changed his mind. “It’s worse when I drink. I always lose time then. Last night I’d been drinking heavily. I left the pub because I could feel myself slipping forwards. I saw you, then it was today.”

Joan sighed. “So what you’re saying is, you had too much to drink and can’t remember walking home?”

“No. What I’m saying is I had too much so I didn’t walk home. I was on the street, then I was I bed. For me, there was nothing in between.”

“But that’s...” She didn’t finish the sentence, but he knew what she wasn’t saying.

“What? Crazy? Yes, I’ve heard it all before. That’s why I stopped telling anyone.” He sighed, ran an anxious hand through his hair, and tried to reign in his racing heart. He felt like crying all over again.

“There’s no such thing as time travel.” Joan said. Her posture was defensive, but uncertain.

“I don’t time travel. Not really. It’s more like my body isn’t quite wired up to time right.” Morse tried once more to explain. 

“Surely people would know about this if it was real. You’d be locked in a lab by now. Some kind of science project to be studied.” 

“No one has seen it happen. I’m safer around other people because I know I won’t lose my grip and slip forward. Well, no, that’s not exactly true actually, my mother saw it, and my father knew about it because it used to happen to her. But you’re the first person since she passed to actually see… well, whatever there is to see when it happens.”

Joan’s lips parted slightly and she tilted her head, the frown now deeply etched across her brow. “You were there, then you weren’t.” She said quietly. “There was nowhere you could have gone, and I was sure I didn’t blink.” She shook her head in disbelief. “It’s too… much to believe. Why would this happen in front of me all of a sudden when it’s never been possible before?”

“Maybe I’d really outdone myself with the whiskey.” Morse shrugged. He didn’t think she would believe him, but it was still hard to see how he changed in her eyes, how he became lesser, smaller, because he wasn’t normal.

“Has it ever happened in other ways around me before? Like you said, the folds or the slowing down?”

He thought back to that other morning on the street and had to swallow back the lump that formed in his throat before answering. 

“Once. Just once.”

“When?”

“The other day.”

“That day? _The_ day? When you asked me to stay?” Joan stepped closer to him then, her stance defiant. She seemed to have lost some of the shadow that had clouded her since the bank.

“Yes.”

“Did you actually say it then? Did it just get lost in a fold?”

He wanted to have the courage to try again, but his heart was still racing. “Say what?”

Joan breathed out slowly, he lips still pressed tightly together. Silence fell between them for a moment and Morse was sure she would leave, but then abruptly she asked, “can you ever control it?” 

No one had ever responded like this, so he was unprepared for the questions she was asking. He decided to try and answer as truthfully as he could. It wasn’t like he couldn’t make things any worse.

“Occasionally,” he replied. “Sometimes I can hold off the slip forwards, and sometimes I can sort of make it happen. Like I give myself a push when I’m bored of waiting for something and then it’s a few minutes later.”

“Alright. Do it now then. Give yourself a ‘push’ and I’ll see you in five minutes.” Joan sat herself down in an armchair. “You don’t mind if I wait do you?”

“Joan, it doesn’t work like-”

“Oh, I’ve been upgraded to Joan now, have I?”

Morse realised his slip too late. The hangover was making it hard to think. “I’m sorry, Miss Thursday-”

Joan cuts him off again. “Joan was fine, thank you. Now, push off, and come back in five minutes and finish what you were going to say to me when you asked me to stay.”

Morse stared at Joan. Sat in his armchair, almost smirking, and ordering him about. She looked so much like the young woman that had opened the door to him two years before, and just for a moment he wonders if he hasn’t somehow slipped backwards. 

He thought about objecting again, explaining that it wasn’t so easy, but then he decided to give it a try. What was the worst that could happen? It probably wouldn’t work with an audience anyway. He closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and did that strange kind of metaphysical shove that sometimes moved him on. 

He opened his eyes and it was night.

 _Well, shit._ He hadn’t expected it to work quite like that. What day was it now? Or what night even.

Joan was no longer sitting in the armchair. Regret washed over him. Did she now think she was mad again? He hoped he hadn’t just made things worse. 

He had a headache, his hangover was still firmly in place, he had lost two whole stretches of time, and Joan now probably thought they were both mad. That was the worst, and it had happened. He sighed and turned around to go and get another cup of tea, and was met with the sight of Joan, wearing one of his old jumpers, and clutching a mug of tea.

“Morse?” 

“I’m sorry, I seem to have… missed somewhat.”

“Morse, it’s Sunday evening.”

“Ah. My apologies.” He quirked his mouth in an attempt at a smile, but he felt too odd for it to sit true. 

Joan handed him the mug of tea and turned back to make another for herself.

“I hope you don’t mind I stuck around so long.” She said, half turning back to him as she poured the hot liquid.

“No, of course not. You’re welcome anytime. I’m sorry I was so… late.”

“No… no need to apologise. It gave me time to… process it all.” Joan finished stirring the milk and sugar into her tea and turned back to him. “Well?”

“I’m sorry?” Morse was at a loss. Was she saying that she believed him, and that she didn’t now think herself mad?

“The bargain was that you proved it, and then you finished that sentence.” Joan blew on the steam, hope and fear mingled in her expression.

“Oh?” Morse tried to think back to a minute or two days before. What had they been talking about? Then he remembered. Joan gave him a small smile. She still looked wary, on edge, like she might run at any moment, but it was tempered now by a streak of defiant hope. “Are you sure?”

“No. But if you never say it, you’ll never know. Aren’t you tired of losing time? Why not get it back, just this once?”

It wasn’t the clearest of analogies, but it made sense to him. He bit back his fear and held onto the moment as tightly as he could, and then spoke the words that had been stolen from him before.

“Stay, please, because you mean the world… _to me_.”

**Author's Note:**

> Folks. I have NO idea what this is. I woke up this morning with that Molière quote stuck in my head, a weird concept, and a mad idea to see how Joan would react.  
> My poor university lecturers probably never imagined that _this_ would be the most use my degree studies would be to me a decade on. The quote is from a drinking song used in the play and roughly translates as "Drink, dear friends; fleeting time invites us to it! Let us profit from life as much as we can."


End file.
